Wednesday 28 August 2013

At last! OFSTED really don't insist on intricate lesson plans and institution-approved forms.

After all the years of running around getting approved paperwork together just to show Inspectors, it is nice to see OFSTED pointedly remarking that they do not expect to see Lesson Plans in their guide.

There are several other sensible changes to the regime that staff may wish to bring managers' attention to - in case they are still insisting on this and that because that's what OFSTED want.

More about this here and, of course, make good use of some web tools!

The OFSTED site itself is pretty helpful too.

Ross Morrison McGill's blog also makes the point that there will now be a whole new range of CPD for staff in December! This, he suggests, would be a suitable cover illustration for the notes.


I am glad to have retired but may even consider doing some part-time work again now, which I definitely would not have down a year ago. And part-timers always miss CPD and training sessions anyway so I should escape them too. 

Of course, if anyone would like some sessions delivered by someone slightly less Grim Reaper-ish just ask. I am available December too and even earlier if you'd like to catch staff while they're enthusiastic.






Wednesday 6 February 2013

Obfuscation


Clearly I am reaching the limits of either Serif WebPlus' or my old pc's capabilities but that's not why I'm posting this screenshot. I have written before about Greenshot and if I were to ever find a piece of software that tells me which programs I use most often other than operating system things then Greenshot would be up there in the Top 10.

Firstly, getting this as an image was simplicity in itself. You just hit the Print Screen button and up comes a grid that you drag around an area of the screen to save. I wasn't terribly accurate with this one and, yes, I could have used alt+Print Screen and then pasted it into an image editor in this particular case but most times I just want a part of a window. Normally that's it, I would just save the image and use it wherever it's intended to go.

This time, however, I thought I'd better do something about an ftp address and, instead of saving, Greenshot has several other options on offer, including its own little editor. I chose that and immediately there's a toolbar with various things I may or may not want to do to the image. The coolest is called Obfuscate and it pixelates whatever area you specify. Love that.

You'll almost want to take screen prints with this tool just so you can obfuscate!


Webtools; notes on Google Forms now available

For some reason I missed out notes I'd written on how to set up a survey using Google's brilliant Forms.

So that's there now - here's the direct link.